Sports and COVID-19

On March 9th is when the world of professional sports stopped. The Utah Jazz and Oklahoma City Thunder were getting ready to play a regular season match but it never even went to tip-off. News struck that Jazz Center Rudy Gobert was positive for COVID-19 and the game was never played, in fact no NBA game was played until July 22nd.

With the suspension of the NBA, it got the other leagues on high alert and the brainstorming began. Each league had to figure out a way to keep their player safe while still being able to play a season, much easier said than done. With the NFL and college football only months away they had to act quickly, while the MLB who was just a few weeks away had to panic. The MLB decided to have a very shortened season of only 60 games when the usual season has 162. They also didn’t allow any fans in stadiums but that’ll change for the NLCS, ALCS, and WS. The NFL didn’t really do much, they just set a limit on how many fans can come into the stadium and that was the same with college football. The NBA however came up with the most elaborate plan, a bubble.

They decided to create a bubble type of thing in the Orlando, players could not leave the bubble at all, there were Pro Am type courts for practicing and then one main court that teams played on. It turned out to be very successful, not a single NBA contracted the virus. The NFL isn’t having the time with it, teams are having to cancel and reschedule games because of COVID cases, same goes for the MLB. All in all, this is a very weird time for sports but each league is doing somewhat of a good job trying to keep it safe and still entertaining.